Watch for chatspeak please

[bethmn]

I use www.iespell.com
Works well for netscape.

[TaffyCheerful]

Originally posted by SaraLovesHerDollys:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Sakurako:
Using spell check would certainly be a bonus, too.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Most browsers don't have spell check.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If you reply to a message, right there on the left side of the page, there is the "Check Spelling" feature...

Taffy

[AGStefanie]

Hi,

I dont mean to be a pain or anything, but all the rules are kind of making me "afraid" to post on this board. I for the life of me cannot type with capital letters at the beginning of sentences on boards like this. I am 23 years old, I grew up talking to all my friends on instant messenger, and it is very difficult to remember punctuation, etc. I think I am a very good speller and use periods where they belong but i tend to forget to capitalize. I can type very very fast and even throughout college, when i wrote my papers, the program would capitalize words like "I" and words in the beginning of a sentence for me. It just goes faster, you get more done. I can type everything as someone is saying it to me without pausing or asking to repeat.

I am not trying to debate whether this is right or wrong, or makes kids today lazier, etc. but thats how it is for me. That does not mean that i dont know that the first letter of a sentence should be capitalized, or that im being careless, and always do it in regular writing.

I dont think not using capitals takes away from the understanding of my writing either. Other things that have been changed in my writing werent abbreviations and i feel like they were completely understandable.

Thats just my opinion, but I feel like i will be more reluctant to post now. there have been a lot of times where people have typed incoherently on here or with way less than perfect grammar and i read it and skipped over it. or, if it was a topic i was very interested in i tried to figure it out. I just think this is seeming very formal to me with these rules.

Sorry if anyone doesnt agree.

edited to say that i think the board is so helpful! if anyone doesnt understand a certain abbreviation, the board usually clarifies it in a few minutes. my opinion is that as long as it doesnt get too out of hand with pluralizing a word with a Z instead of an S or something, that everything is fine.

<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ August 14, 2006 04:58 PM: Message edited by: AGStefanie ]</font>

[[email protected]]

Thanks for explaining your perspective, AGStefanie.

I notice that you did succeed at doing much better with the capitalization and punctuation in this post.

While I can now understand your discomfort much more clearly, our standards are there for good reasons, and we need to request that all of our members do their best to follow these rules. Otherwise, more and more members will be tempted to slip back into "chatspeak".

I have been trying to contact various members privately, as I notice which members are having difficulties in this area, but since we moderators are only human, we will not necessarily read every post, or notice every habit of incoherence, or others of the aspects of "chatspeak". We can only contact those that we do happen to come across. So you will still occasionally find someone who hasn't gotten "into the groove" yet, but hopefully as time goes by, and people get more accustomed to writing this way, those slip-ups will be fewer and fewer.

Fortunately, speed is not necessary when we are typing on a message board.

We would love to have you stay and post with us. Perhaps you might become more comfortable with the rules as you continue to practice this new kind of writing? Or perhaps you might enlist a friend to edit your posts for you every 12-24 hrs?

Thanks again,
Joy

<font color="#33CCCC"><font size="1">[ August 14, 2006 05:16 PM: Message edited by: djsnjones ]</font></font>

<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ August 14, 2006 05:20 PM: Message edited by: djsnjones ]</font>

[AGStefanie]

I am sorry, I will try harder. It is just a habit for me and thats how I type without thinking. Like, if i read a topic and want to reply, I just start typing as I'm thinking and it happens.

I think I can type the right way as long as I remember (thats the problem though!). Some other members have been very very nice and explained to me that it takes them longer to understand. Hope I can get it right!

-Stefanie

[[email protected]]

Thanks, Stefanie!

We certainly can't ask more of people than that they try!

Thanks again,
Joy [img]smile.gif[/img]

[smwoodsie2004]

I kinda agree with Stephenie. I should feel comfortable here, not feeling like someone is looking over my shoulder, as if I am in school, critiquing everything I write. This whole topic makes me feel uncomfortable and feel as if the mods think we are children that need to monitered in regards to our English skills. Beleive me, when I say I am new to "chatspeak", but we learn and adapt. Everyone here, never seem to have a problem explaining anything. I want to feel comfortable here, but if it begins to feel as if this board is analyzing everything I write and edited it, then I wouldn't want to be here. This is not a paper or a school/work site that needs to represent proper English skills, this is friends talking to each other. Another thing is if the moderators are going to decide what is acceptable in terms of shortened words, then it should be all words. Why is it a pick and choose option? Either let abbrivations in or non at all. Another thing, my screen for posting a reply DOES NOT have spell check, and when I am talking to friends, I don't look at a dictionary or type a sentence to see if it is grammatically correct before I speak, that is what school and work is for, not conversing amoungst friends. That's my two cents about this.
-Lorelei

[only1genevieve]

The more you practice, the easier it will get. Just think, this is good practice for all of the e-mails you will have to send at and for work later on in life [img]smile.gif[/img] .

[[email protected]]

As we explained earlier in the thread, we are not looking for perfection. We are mainly looking for the basics, and they would be as follows.......

--capitalization at the beginning of sentences
--capitalization of proper names
--capitalization of the word "I"
--periods at the ends of sentences, instead of paragraph-long run-on sentences, with commas where periods should be
--apostrophies for words that are contractions, like "don't", "they're", "I'll", "can't", etc.
--absence of the substitution of various numbers and letters for real words, like "c" for "see", and "4" for "for", etc.

And we aren't editing for occasional slip-ups. What I watch for is what a person's habitual way of writing is. When I see a post that is full of problems like those I have listed just now, I then look at other posts by the same person. "Full" means that most or all of the contractions are minus apostrophes, most or all of the capitalization is missing, or most or all of the punctuation is missing. If all of their posts are full of the same problems, then I contact them.

We also have a list of approved abbreviations in the FAQs page, for all of you to refer to if you have questions. Hopefully we can update it soon, to add the common AG abbreviations that we all use, so that the newcomers and non-English-speakers will not be so mystified.

So please, everyone, please do not start to feel paranoid. The occasional slip-up is not at all a problem. None of us is perfect, and we all make mistakes sometimes, and that's ok.

Joy [img]wink.gif[/img]

<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ August 14, 2006 05:41 PM: Message edited by: djsnjones ]</font>

[AGStefanie]

Originally posted by for_my_rose:
This whole topic makes me feel uncomfortable and feel as if the mods think we are children that need to monitered in regards to our English skills.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I dont mean to keep this topic going or anything, but I think that is kind of what bothered me at first. It is kind of uncomfortable, but I am working on it if people can understand me better. People who did grow up doing everything on the computer tend to type different, and I dont mean to offend in any way. It tended to make me feel young to be corrected.

I can completely see both sides- at first I thought that it didn't matter because everyone can understand me either way. But now it has been called to my attention that not everyone does understand without the capitals. So- I'm working on it for that.

And that's all I have to say on it!

<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ August 14, 2006 05:46 PM: Message edited by: AGStefanie ]</font>